The Scottish Ballet is justifiably taking a great deal of pride in These Violent Delights. The dance company is one of the artistic endeavours Scotland is most proud of and this movie – a modern version of Romeo and Juliet, told entirely through dance – will bring its its ethos to a much wider audience. This could easily play in schools, not least because its adaptation has cleverly modernised the setting to make it relatable to modern kids. It did this while also filming in various stately homes around Scotland, highlighting some unusually gorgeous settings without ever taking away from the dancing. At 70 minutes, it will not tax modern attention spans either. It’s a treat to see a movie understand exactly what it wants to do and achieve it so perfectly.
Co-directors Oscar Sansom and Christopher Hampson, as well as cinematographer David Liddell, ensure that the entire bodies of the dancers are always in frame, so we get to appreciate their hard work in its entirety. Many filmmakers on much larger productions would do well to study how the camera holds back, observing without ever being static, as the young lovers Juliet (Kayla-Maree Tarantolo) and Romeo (Ishan Mahabir-Stokes) figure out their feelings. Romeo’s family is old money, taking tea in a prim room and displeased by their favourite son’s high spirits. Juliet’s family is new money, all designer sportswear and leopard print, and she is a tomboy who doesn’t really fit in. Her nurse (Grace Horler) also has a friend (Anna Williams) and the ways the two women support Juliet as she thrills to new love in her bedroom is a fresh interpretation of that dynamic. But there’s space for out-of-the-box thinking when the story is so well known. Here the apothecary is a nightclub by that same name, and the friar is actually two pill-pushing “sisters” (Harvey Littlefield and Rishan Benjamin), who have a great strutting dance on the elevated platform that fills their club.
But, unusually for an adaptation of this kids-in-love story, the focus here is entirely on Juliet. The plot follows Ms. Tarantolo almost exclusively as she tries to decide whether to enter the arranged marriage her family wants for her, follow her heart with Romeo, or the other options nights dancing in The Apothecary suggest. There is some voiceover (done by Jessica Hardwick) which occasionally spells out Juliet’s thought processes, but usually we get to watch Ms. Tarantolo embody her feelings through movement. Sami Fendall’s costuming has her in lots of gold necklaces, hoop earrings, boyish t-shirts and baggy shorts – in other words, like half the teenage girls in UK cities – but she moves with the practiced grace of, well, a ballerina. Watching her tease Tybalt (James Garrington) or argue with her mother (Marge Hendrick) or get swept off her feet by Romeo is to understand why dance has so much to offer us: it shows the limits of words.
These limits are always good to see especially when the ways we relate to each other become more and more moderated by screens. Taking one of the world’s most famous love story and slyly tweaking it so it becomes about a teenage girl asserting herself is also very, very cool. Too many women of any age still find it unusually tough to make their own choices, romantic or not, so any art which supports this is to be supported. But it’s very easy to be supportive when These Violent Delights is as good as it is – sparky, rowdy, tender and with a real sense of its place in the world. Watching a young woman pirouette on her own two feet as she makes her own decisions about her future is just spectacular. Let’s hope plenty of young women get the chance to watch how Ms. Tarantolo moves through the world and decide to do the same for themselves.
These Violent Delights is now in theaters.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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